The Case of the Sliding Pool Read online

  “Only what my real estate man told me. This was one of the first houses built on Laurel Way, and it set the pattern.”

  “And do you know the name of the pool builder? Most pools have metal plates set into them with the name of the builder.”

  “I suppose they do, but not ours.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Absolutely. I was curious about it. I asked our pool-care man about it once, and he said that back in those days, most pools were not gunnite, which is a way of spraying a metal form with concrete. Ours is—or was, I should say—just an enormous concrete tub, with walls eight inches thick. That makes a great pool, but I guess it was just too much weight for the hillside to carry after the rains we’ve been having.”

  “That still doesn’t explain the absence of the builder’s nameplate.”

  “No, but our pool man—”

  “What’s his name?” Beckman asked.

  “Joe Garcia. I have his address inside. He lives in Santa Monica. Do you want it?”

  “Later,” Masuto said. “Go on.”

  “Well, he said that probably the pool was built by the same contractor who built the house, and since he was not mainly in the pool business, he wouldn’t have a nameplate.”

  “Do you know the contractor’s name?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “It was so long ago,” Kelly’s wife said. “Thirty years. Do you really think you could ever find out who put the body there—or even who the man was?”

  “We have to try,” Masuto told her.

  “You can’t write off a homicide,” Beckman added.

  “But how can you be sure it was a homicide?”

  “It generally is when they hide the body,” Masuto said. “But let’s get back to the house. We’ve accounted for ten years. Do you know who the owner was before Simmons?”

  “We think it was Jerry Bender, the comic,” Mary Kelly said. “We still get some of his mail—can you imagine, after ten years.”

  “But I think he only lived here a year or two,” Kelly told them.

  “All right. You’ve been very helpful. Now I want you to think about this very carefully. In the time you’ve lived here, have you ever had a visit from a man you didn’t know? Let me be more explicit. This man is between fifty-eight and sixty-five years old. He might have offered some excuse, perhaps that he was from an insurance company or from some city agency or from the water company—but in any case, he would be interested in seeing your terrace.”

  “Got you,” Kelly said eagerly. “After all, I write these things. You’re thinking that the killer might have come back, to see that his burial ground is undisturbed—am I right?”

  Masuto smiled. “Quite right.”

  “The trouble is,” Mary Kelly said, “that I can’t think of anyone who fits that description. Can you, John?”

  “Not offhand, no.”

  “But people do come around, I’m sure,” Mary Kelly said. “The trouble is that John and I spend so much time at the studio. He has his office there, where he writes the show, and when you do a daily soap, it’s very often eight or ten hours a day for me.”

  “And who takes care of the house?”

  “We have a sweet Mexican lady, whose name is Gloria Mendoza. She comes in every day, cleans, and cooks if we come home for dinner. We give her weekends off, so she’s not here today. But she’ll be here on Monday.”

  “Perhaps we’ll speak to her on Monday. Meanwhile, in a few hours you’ll be besieged by reporters and media people. I would appreciate your not mentioning that either Detective Beckman or I are working on this case. If they ask you what the police are doing, you can refer them to Captain Wainwright.”

  When they left, Masuto informed Beckman that there was an old road at the bottom of the canyon from which they could reach the swimming pool.

  “You got to be kidding. Aside from the mud, the brush is soaking wet.”

  “The way we look now, what difference will it make?”

  It nevertheless made a difference, for by the time they reached the shell of the swimming pool, clawing up the brush-covered slope of the canyon, they were soaked from head to foot and their shoes and trousers had become soggy clumps of mud. Nor was anything to be found there, only the big concrete form, split along one side and perhaps destined to lie there on the hillside for years to come. There was no identifying plate or mark.

  “Well, that’s that,” Masuto said.

  “The hell with it,” Beckman concluded. “He’s been dead for thirty years, and another day or two won’t hurt. Let’s knock off and get into dry clothes.”

  With the end of the rain Kati removed the four pans she had set out in Masuto’s meditation room to catch the leaks in the ceiling, thinking at the same time that she must have the roof repaired. She had heard that more roofs leaked in Los Angeles than in any other city because the rainy season was four months long, leaving eight dry months to lull the population into believing that it would never rain again. Well, it would, and this time she would make certain that the roof was repaired.

  Tonight, the room was once again usable, but Masuto’s meditation was not successful. Again and again there intruded the image of a naked man, put to death thirty years ago. The moment he arrived home, Masuto had telephoned All Saints Hospital, only to be informed by the intern on duty in the pathology lab that Dr. Baxter had left for the day. It was understandable. The bones had kept for thirty years; they would keep for another day. But Masuto found the puzzle compelling. He felt that all of life was a puzzle, and most of it beyond answer.

  Later, at dinner, with Masuto and his wife eating together after the children had been put to bed, Kati asked tentatively about what horror had called him out into the rain. Her questions were always tentative, voiced with the understanding that the worst things would be concealed from her.

  “We found the skeleton of a man murdered thirty years ago.”

  “How very awful!” But with a note of relief. If it had happened so long ago, there was surely no threat to her husband. That concerned her most.

  Masuto told her the story, stressing the fact that the couple who owned the house were very nice people. It was not often that he could bring Kati a story about nice people.

  “But surely there’s no way you can find the killer now?”

  “We’ll try.”

  “I’m sure he’s dead,” Kati said firmly. “There are other punishments beside the police.”

  “Possibly. In any case, we’ll try.”

  “But not tomorrow,” Kati said firmly. “Tomorrow, the man on the television tells us, will be the first sunny day in a week, and we are taking the children to Disneyland.”

  “I was supposed to check in,” Masuto told her, but without conviction. “Today is the last day of vacation. I do not work on Sunday.”

  “You worked today.” She had changed a good deal since she joined a consciousness-raising group of Nisei women. “You can point that out to Captain Wainwright. No one else works on Sunday.”

  “Except policemen.”

  “We are all going to Disneyland.”

  Masuto telephoned Wainwright, who unexpectedly admitted that the bones would keep. The Masuto family spent the day at Disneyland. And on and off, when Masuto glanced at his wife, he noted a strange, slight smile of satisfaction on her lips.

  Monday morning Masuto stopped off at All Saints Hospital and made his way to the pathology room, where Baxter’s two young, bearded assistants leered at him knowingly, as if every corpse sent there by the Beverly Hills police was his own handiwork. Behind them Dr. Baxter bent over the skeleton, which he had laid out on an autopsy table.

  “Well, here he is,” Baxter said unpleasantly, which was his normal manner. “I suppose you want his name, sex, age, and the details of what killed him?”

  “Only because of my enormous respect for your skill.”

  “Bunk! Anyway, his name is your business, not mine.”

  “Very true.”

/>   “Have you got it? No. Of course not. Do you know why some murders are solved? Because murder is an idiot game. Show me a murderer, and I’ll show you an IQ of ninety-five. When an intelligent man turns his hand to murder, your numbskull police force is paralyzed.”

  “And is that what we have here?” Masuto asked gently. “An intelligent murderer?”

  “You’re damn right, which is why the body stayed in its grave for thirty years. If not for these ridiculous rains, it would have remained there forever.”

  “Perhaps, or perhaps nothing is forever. But acknowledging that neither of us knows the name of the victim, I’m sure you can tell me the rest.”

  “You’re damn right I can. The deceased was a male Caucasian, about five feet eight inches tall, age between twenty-five and thirty, and killed by a knife wound, a hard, deep thrust from the rear. How do I know? Come over here.” Masuto took his place on the opposite side of the autopsy table. “This,” Baxter said, pointing, “counting down is the sixth of the thoracic vertebrae. Notice that scrape on the left side, actually nicked a piece of the bone. Tremendous force, drove right through the vertebral aponeurosis into the heart. A long, heavy blade, maybe something like a bowie knife, back to front, right through the body and heart and nicked this rib, right here. The son of a bitch who killed him knew what he was doing. I’ve seen a hundred knife wounds, but not like this. This gent had practice. Nobody drives a knife through the entire thickness of a human body unless he’s been trained to do it and has done it before.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Was I there? I’m sure of nothing. I’m telling you what the bones say.”

  “How do you know it was a white man?”

  “It’s my guess—shape of the skull, relationships of tibia and femur, and here in the skull, the shape of the mesethmoid, right here where it holds the cartilage. Could be a black man, but not likely. Like I said, I wasn’t there.”

  “And the age?”

  “Condition of the teeth, good teeth, two missing—knocked out, I’d guess—but not one damn cavity for you Sherlocks to fool around with dental charts.”

  “Why do you say knocked out?”

  “Because I use my head. You can see the broken stump.”

  Masuto ran his finger over the stump. “Worn smooth. Not a rich man. He could have had it capped. I think your conclusions are brilliant, doc.”

  “You’re damn right they are!”

  “Well, at least you don’t suffer from modesty.”

  “Modesty is for fools. I ought to be chief medical examiner downtown, and instead I waste my years in Beverly Hills.”

  “What about broken bones?” Masuto asked. “Any healed fractures?”

  “Not a one.” He grinned at Masuto with satisfaction. “Really handed you one, didn’t I? You find the man who did in this stack of bones and I’ll take back every nasty thing I ever said about you.”

  “If he’s alive, I’ll find him.”

  “Talking about modesty—”

  “As you said, it’s for fools.”

  * * *

  Wainwright was waiting for Masuto in the police station on Rexford Drive. “I suppose you’ve seen the papers,” he said. “This city needs flashy corpses like I need a hole in my head. Would you believe it, the city manager’s blaming me for a murder took place thirty years ago.”

  “Who else can he blame?”

  “I told him to forget about it. This is a dead end. In a few days the newspapers will get tired, and we can close the file. I’m shorthanded enough without you and Beckman wasting the city’s money trying to find a murderer who’s maybe dead ten years ago. Especially when our chances of finding out who was zonked are practically zilch. Beckman spent half the day Sunday down at L.A. Police trying to spot a disappearance that would fit. Nothing. We got nothing, and we’re likely to get nothing.”

  “Where’s Beckman now?”

  “Over with the town records. They were closed yesterday. He’s trying to find out who the contractor was and when the pool was poured. But goddamnit, I know you, Masao. I don’t want any federal case made of this.”

  “Ah, so,” Masuto said mildly. “Murder is done in Beverly Hills, and the captain of detectives is indifferent. A thousand pardons, but how does one explain that?”

  “Don’t give me that Charlie Chan routine, Masao. I can see you licking your lips and getting set to chase ghosts for the next two months. Meanwhile, houses are being broken into and stores are being robbed.”

  “Will you give Beckman and me a week?”

  “Why? What have you got? Bones.”

  Beckman walked in. He stood watching Wainwright and Masuto with interest.

  “Bones that once belonged to someone, to a white man, five feet eight inches tall, in very good health, but poor, a laborer, I suspect, and truculent—oh, about twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old.”

  “You got to be kidding,” Wainwright said.

  “Who was murdered,” Masuto went on, “possibly on a Sunday by his friend, a man who had commando training in World War Two, who planned the murder very carefully, and who knew how to operate a backhoe.”

  “And you also have an eyewitness,” Wainwright said sardonically.

  “An assortment of intelligent guesses put together mostly by Dr. Sam Baxter, but it’s a starting point, isn’t it? I’m only asking for a week. And what a feather in the cap of my good captain if we can come up with the answer.”

  “I’ll tell you what. Today’s Monday. If you can come up with a tag for the deceased and a motive by Wednesday, you got the rest of the week. If on Wednesday you still got nothing but Sam Baxter’s pipe dreams, we close the file.”

  “You’re all heart,” Masuto said.

  “I’m a sucker for your Oriental flimflam, that’s what I am.” He turned on Beckman. “Don’t stand around wearing down your heels. Get in there with Masuto and do something. I got a police department to run,” he said with disgust. “Crime in this city is up eight percent from a year ago, and you work on puzzles.”

  In Masuto’s office Beckman observed that Wainwright was in a lovely mood this morning.

  “Just normal good nature. What have you got, Sy?”

  “I got the name of the contractor. Alex Brody on Maple Street in Inglewood. Here’s the address, but whether he still lives there or is alive or dead, God knows. According to the records, the first building permit for Forty-four hundred Laurel Way was issued on May ninth, and the final inspection took place on August twelfth, both nineteen fifty. I got hold of the plans, which include the swimming pool, but there’s no way of telling from the records when the pool was poured or whether it was separately contracted. If it was, it would have been a subcontract, because only one set of plans was filed.”

  “Was the house built on slab?”

  “I thought of that,” Beckman said with satisfaction. “According to the building guys they were just beginning to pour slab foundations around that time. You’re thinking they would have poured the concrete for the pool at the same time.”

  “It makes sense. It was a slab base?”

  “According to the plans.”

  “We’ll suppose they started on May ninth, the day they got their permit. They had to put down the footings, excavate, wait for an inspection, then bring in the plumbers and lay the pipes and the ducts. It has to be three weeks to a month before they pour the concrete. Let’s say the first of June—which means that our John Doe disappeared during the month of June nineteen fifty.” He took a file folder from his desk and labeled it John Doe. Inside, on a sheet of paper, he wrote, “John Doe, white, age 25 to 30, height 5/8, died June 1950.” He handed the file to Beckman. “There’s our starting point. What did you learn yesterday?”

  “From the L.A. cops—nothing. They got this new computer, and we ran through every disappearance for three years, forty-nine, fifty, and fifty-one. We turned up a lot of kids and three adult women—but nothing like an adult male. Plenty of murders, but they always man
aged to lay hands on a body.”

  “All right. I’m going to drive down to Inglewood and see if I can find the contractor. Meanwhile, check the county out with the sheriff’s office, and you might as well do the adjoining counties, Ventura, Orange, and San Bernadino. Try the F.B.I. too. They keep a file on kidnapings, but I’m not sure they have one on disappearances. Anyway, check them. You might also try San Francisco and San Diego and Long Beach—”

  “You don’t think I’ll turn up anything, do you?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “If you did, you’d include every county in the state.”

  “And have Wainwright screaming about the phone bill?” Masuto shrugged. “Maybe you’re right, but give it a try anyway. You see, I don’t think this was a crime of passion, Sy. I think it was a coldblooded, planned execution. I think the killer selected John Doe because there wasn’t a soul in the world who cared whether John Doe lived or died. If you want to kill someone, you kill them. It’s not hard to kill a human being, and this killer was a pro. I think the killing was an adjunct to his intention and his need. His need was to make John Doe disappear—forever. That’s why the body was naked.”

  “You’d think that with fifty thousand pounds of swimming pool on top of the body, he’d rest easy.”

  “No. He was or is a very thorough man. Neat, cold, calculating—and orderly. And if he’s still alive, now that the body’s been uncovered, he will be very unhappy, very nervous, and as sure as there’s a thing in this universe called karma, our paths will cross—perhaps in the next few days.”

  “Come on, Masao,” Beckman said, “I’ve seen you pull off some creepy ones, but this is way out. We may never find out who John Doe is, and now you’re telling me that the killer is going to play footsie with us? How? Why?”

  “All right, Sy—you tell me. Why was John Doe stripped naked? Why was he put down under the pool? Why wasn’t the killer satisfied with a plain, old-fashioned murder?”

  “You’ll have to ask the killer those questions.”

  “Or perhaps not. I’ve wracked my brain for reasons, and I can come up with only one. It was not John Doe who had to disappear; it was our killer. And since in our very complex society it is not enough to disappear, the killer had to become someone else. He had to have a new name, a new driver’s license, a new social security card, a new birth date, a place of origin and in that place, a birth certificate. He was not content with changing his name—he was too ambitious; he planned his future. He had to have a whole new identity. Do you see it now?”